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Friday, February 28, 2014

Chicago charters with high expulsion rates should be proud of peaceful learning environments

By Steve Gunn -

CHICAGO – In case you haven’t heard, there is a major push among the nation’s educators to reverse the trend of kicking trouble-making students out of school.

The idea is to change the focus to in-house punishment, to maximize the possibility of offending students remaining enrolled and eventually earning their diplomas.

To kick them out, the argument goes, is to guarantee their spot on the human scrap pile.

In Chicago, this line of thinking is about to grab the headlines. That’s because officials from Chicago Public Schools, mired in long-term, heated competition for students and government funding with the city’s charter schools, have released new data suggesting that charters expel students at a significantly higher rate than traditional schools do.

“The data reveal that during the last school year, 3,076 students were kicked out of charter schools, which have a total enrollment of about 50,000,” the Chicago Tribune reported. “In district-run schools, there were 182 kids expelled out of a student body of more than 353,000.”

In the current academic year, Chicago charter schools have already expelled 151 students, nearly three times the number expelled from public schools, the news report said.

CPS Chief Executive Officer Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who openly opposes charter school expansion, seemed to suggest that the numbers illustrate a lack of commitment to struggling students by charter school officials, and a singular interest in only keeping outstanding students who reflect positively on their schools.

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Chicago charters with high expulsion rates should be proud of peaceful learning environments

By Steve Gunn -

CHICAGO – In case you haven’t heard, there is a major push among the nation’s educators to reverse the trend of kicking trouble-making students out of school.

The idea is to change the focus to in-house punishment, to maximize the possibility of offending students remaining enrolled and eventually earning their diplomas.

To kick them out, the argument goes, is to guarantee their spot on the human scrap pile.

In Chicago, this line of thinking is about to grab the headlines. That’s because officials from Chicago Public Schools, mired in long-term, heated competition for students and government funding with the city’s charter schools, have released new data suggesting that charters expel students at a significantly higher rate than traditional schools do.